Sower
By Bei Dao
a sower walks into the great hall
it's war out there, he says
and you awash in emptiness
you've sworn off your duty to sound the alarm
I've come in the name of fields
it's war out there
I walk out from that great hall
all four directions a boundless harvest scene
I start planning for war
rehearsing death
and the crops I burn
send up the wolf-smoke of warning fires
but something haunts me furiously:
he's sowing seed across marble floors
Copyright Credit: "Sower" by Bei Dao, from Forms of Distance, copyright © 1993 by Zhao Zhenkai. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Source: Forms of Distance (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993)